The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy (Hart and Mercy, #1)

by Megan Bannen

but there was a reason Hart continued to patronize his least favorite undertaker in all the border towns that clung to the hem of the Tanrian Marshals’ West Station

What a shame that such a great dog belonged to the worst of all undertaking office managers.

“Are you here to pet my dog, or do you actually have a body to drop off?”

Birdsall & Son was not the only official drop-off site for bodies recovered in Tanria without ID tags. From now on, he would take his keyless cadavers to Cunningham’s.

Every time he slayed an indigent drudge in Tanria, he brought the corpse to Birdsall & Son, Undertakers.

Great. A lecture from his boss. Who used to be his partner and his friend. Who called him Ralston now.

She had a point. Only a pathetically friendless loser would face his nemesis time and again to pet her dog for five minutes.

Maybe that’s why I keep putting myself in her crosshairs. Maybe there’s a strange comfort in knowing that at least one person feels something for me, even if that feeling could best be described as hate.

The more people pour into Tanria, the more bodies there are for drudges to take over, and it gets worse year after year.

an off-kilter world created by imprisoned gods with nothing better to do.

the fact that once people could get through the Mist and die in Tanria, they could be turned into drudges, which is why the Tanrian Marshals were formed.”

“Exactly. Don’t insult dogs like that.”

She felt a jolt of understanding, a connection to the writer, like magnets set too far apart to snap together but quivering with proximity.

“It’s not loaded,” Hart said blandly from his battered old folding stool, where he calmly sipped a cup of chamomile tea.

He had written a letter to no one, but someone had written back. And he liked this someone.

He didn’t want Duckers to know that his whole world had been changed in the course of ten minutes.

And it wasn’t because he didn’t like to dance. He did, actually. But he no longer had anyone to dance with, hadn’t for ages.

You can probably expect similar delays in the future, but I promise I won’t stop writing unless you want me to.

and Hard decided that a sink-or-swim method of teaching his apprentice might be in order here.

Typo oh no

well as the packet of envelopes he had purchased at the commissary. He gave Duckers the small smile he’d kept hidden up till now before writing Dear friend at the top of the page.

He hadn’t caught her in flagrante delicto with some lover in the boatworks; she had been making love to baked goods. But

That is enemy cleavage, he reminded himself.

distraction to very focused and very obvious attraction.

Duckers had arrived in town a half hour ago, and he already had a date. Hart hadn’t so much as held a woman’s hand in months.

and he wished Diane hadn’t taken his hat, so that he could set it on one knee and fiddle with it. He felt like a child bereft of his security blanket.

is the cause of my loneliness. So it’s self-inflicted, whereas your problems seem to be a result of circumstances outside your control, which is a shame. You deserve better.

They all thought they knew what was best for her, but had any of them bothered to ask her what she wanted, what would make her happy? Had any of them so much as scratched the surface, or did they all assume she would go on as she always had, putting everyone else first without contemplating the toll she paid for it?

He’d never even told Alma about the house and the souls or what had happened the night Bill died.

P.S.—I live in Bushong. P.P.S.—Telling you that much makes me break out into a cold sweat.

Can you read this? My hand is shaking so badly I can hardly hold the pen.

Hart held up the uncashed, undeposited paychecks. “This child has no bank account.” Alma burst out laughing.

She wasn’t going to like him.

There was Mercy, wearing the same bright yellow dress she’d worn the day he’d walked into Birdsall & Son over four years ago.

He had to face her.

and one thought finally took shape in his brain: I think I want this to be real.

He wanted her to hate his letter-writing self as much as she hated his flesh-and-blood self. He wanted to obliterate any foolish hope she’d been cherishing about her friend, the same way she was destroying his now. And then he could go back to the way he’d been before he’d ever set pen to paper and slid a ridiculous confession into a nimkilim box.

His friend who, as it turned out, was not his friend at all, had told him he had a rapier in place of a heart, and maybe she was right. It was stabbing him in his bleak, grim, depressing novel of a soul.

Maybe he hadn’t shown up because he sincerely believed that he wasn’t good enough for her. Maybe he hadn’t shown up precisely because he thought she was kind of special.

“I don’t want to go on vacation,” he whined—literally whined.

He wanted to feel something—anything—other than the despondency that had taken hold of him and refused to let go.

After that, Mom was all he had, the two of them living in the old house with the blue door in central Arvonia.

Where he had done more than simply watch.

Their friendship had been nothing more than paper, and paper burned with ease.

P.S.—I miss you.

Did he have the courage to stand in front of her and say, “This is who I am”? The prospect sounded terrifying. But then he read the postscript again, and it echoed inside him until he didn’t know if it was Mercy’s voice or his own saying the words.

He missed her. He missed Mercy Birdsall, who had somehow, miraculously, become his friend.

The bell was still ringing when Hart dropped his weapons and reached for her, taking her face into his trembling hands. “Mercy?” Her name was a sob in his mouth.

Hart nearly dropped to his knees to comfort her, but then he remembered that he had no right to do any such thing,

There it was, a truth so evident that it may as well have been painted on his forehead in red letters. He was helplessly, boundlessly, stupidly in love with Mercy Birdsall.

Twyla Banneker